Pages

Thursday, June 13, 2013

On Authenticity, by Andrew Colgoni

Here’s the thing: inauthenticity stinks. I mean that quite
literally. People can smell it when you act like someone other than yourself
(excepting the best sociopaths, of course). There was a reason that your mom
always told you to “just be yourself”. It wasn’t because acting is hard, it’s
because everybody has a finely tuned radar for fakers (fadar?). In fact, I’ll
bet that when you are inauthentic, you can smell it on yourself, too. It’s like
that time you stepped in dog poop, and then were sitting at the park bench
wondering “what’s that smell?” Happily, you could wipe your shoes furiously on
the grass before you had to walk on carpet.

Ok, so why am I spending so much metaphorical language on
inauthenticity? I want to relate this to teaching. Some of the finest tuned
fadar there is exists in students. Those clever kids just know when you are trying to be hip with the youth. Remember back in
the 90’s when everyone tried to blend hip-hop with anything else to give it a
veneer of cool, but it just seemed off? That’s how you look
when you go up in front of a class and try to be something other than yourself.
Now, I’m not advocating that you shouldn’t be a little more enthusiastic than
normal, that’s ok. But you shouldn’t be so over-enthusiastic that it makes
people question your sanity, especially if you’re normally subdued.

The same goes for using youth ‘props’. We seem to think that
we need to connect with the youth by ‘speaking in their language’ (a topic I
could rant about at length). So, we think, “Great! I’ll look up what the youth
are into, and co-opt that!” We show up to class with a bag of internet
memes and rage comics and use that to illustrate our
points. But here’s the thing: if you don’t usually make memes, it shows. The
students know it, you know it, and everyone’s a little weirded out.

The lesson here isn’t simply don’t use memes, or don’t get
rowdy. Rather, if you are actually into memes or are naturally freaky, then go
for it**. If you like horrible puns (the man who fell into an upholstery
machine is now fully recovered*) roll with that. Big into sci-fi? Then
reference that, fellow browncoat.
What happens when you do this (what we call “being yourself”) is that your
actual excitement and passion will show through, and you will bring your
students along with you. And, hey, isn’t bringing students along with you what
teaching is all about?

So, before you go into that classroom, wipe your shoes
furiously on the grass.

Andrew Colgoni is the
Science Fluencies Librarian at Thode Library at McMaster University. He tweets @colgoni.